001 | Mass Effect Favorite character: Jack!!! I loved her as a ball of rage in ME2, learning that she can actually start trusting people (and I hc her as slowly, offscreen building up that trust and friendships with the rest of the crew, not just Shepard) and her touching vulnerability and just. God. Her loyalty mission guts me every time. Least Favorite character: Ulp. There are so many characters I love, and others I love to hate, but in a fun way? And there are others who I like but think the writing team did them dirty. So uh. If I have to choose, I guess Ashley? I don't even dislike her, I just didn't emotionally latch on to her the way I did most of my other squadmates. Plus she had the disadvantage of being dead in my first ME2 playthrough, which is where I started playing. 5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): I have so many ships!!!! Jack/Miranda is one of my faves, but I’m also into Kasumi/Miranda and Drack/Lexi. With the right writer, I am also into Cora/Sarissa and Samara/Zaeed. Character I find most attractive: Jack!!! Character I would marry: Samantha Traynor!!!! I love her very much and adore her understanding of the important things in life. Like fancy toothbrushes! (I would also marry Kasumi, but I have other cherished ships for her and suspect I’m too much of a boring law-abiding homebody for the best thief in the galaxy.) Character I would be best friends with: Oof, that’s a hard one. Samantha? If not, then maybe Tali or Kasumi. a random thought: What does space food taste like??? Given time and all the other alien cultures mingling, what’s the new fast food??? What asari seasonings or snacks have become popular on Earth? What are the new trends and opinions on different racial/ethnic foods, and what about the eye-rolling that must inevitably occur when you get statements like “asari food is all X” and an asari rolls their eyes and goes “nah, that’s only true about this one region of Thessia, when you get more inland the flavor profiles all change”? An unpopular opinion: I don’t know how unpopular this actually is, but: Andromeda’s a decent game. I fully admit that I was disappointed that it wasn’t like the trilogy, and there are many areas that I would have liked to have improved, but it was decent. I had fun running around shooting things, I loved my companions, and yes, I do criticize the general themes of space colonization, but it’s still a perfectly fun game to play. My Canon OTP: Tali/Garrus is adorable. My Non-canon OTP: Jack/Miranda!!!! Most Badass Character: Oof. So many of them get such great moments throughout the game, but Samara? Ask me on a different day and I might pick someone else, but her utter commitment to the code and the way she completely changed the course of her life makes me ache. And then at the monastery in ME3, where she’s ready to kill herself to give Falere a chance to live free…? Oh god I cried so damn much. Most Epic Villain: Honestly, the epic scope of the war against the Reapers meant that individual villains rarely felt ‘epic’ to me, just because the enemy itself was so often impersonal? ME1 was my least favorite of the games so I never replayed it, but I did find the fights against Saren and Benezia more touching specifically because they had those more personal connections to the characters. Pairing I am not a fan of: There are enough interesting characters and interactions that as long as it’s not one of my hard no’s (incest or non-con) that I’m willing to give most of them a shot. So uh. I’m really having to think hard on this one. Maaaaaybe Wrex/Grunt? I think they could be fun to play off against one another, but I wouldn’t ship them. Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Why the hell did they give Ashley the makeover in ME3!!! Her whole thing was that she’s a soldier and just!!! In making these design choices we are also making statements about the character and I don’t think they really thought this through!!!! (Similarly: as much as I love Jack, uh. Her heavy makeup is AMAZING but where the hell does this hard-ass convict have the time to do her eyeliner! Where does she get it! I could buy it as part of her development in ME3 in a way that I don’t buy it in Ashley! Also what is with Samara’s outfit!!! Gotta be a space wizard samurai of a quasi-religious order but oops gotta put on heels and bare your tiddies!) Favourite Friendship: There are so many great character dynamics it’s hard to choose!!!! Uh. Tali and Garrus, maybe? They’re one of the few pairs where we get to see them throughout the entire trilogy, and it’s lovely. Character I most identify with: Oof, this is a hard one. And honestly, it’s changed over the years and at different points in the trilogy (or Andromeda). So I’m gonna go with the absolutely tongue-in-cheek answer about the quarian lady who has a vibrator built into her suit and is completely oblivious to her turian friend trying to flirt with her. Horny and oblivious? Yep, that’s me. Character I wish I could be: I’m perfectly happy where I am, honestly. And while there are some things I’d love to have (the tight-knit friendships, the sense of place and belonging, some of the eventual happy endings they get) most of the characters suffer through enough to get there that I don’t really want to switch lives.
003 | Sloane Kelly: How I feel about this character: Underrated fave!!!! Especially because goddammit but the game itself feels so explicitly designed and written so that they WANT the player to view her as an antagonist, especially because they don’t give her the same level of sympathetic interaction or in-game backstory that they do with other characters like Reyes or Akksul! And it’s really fucking hard for me to disentangle that from general misogynoir and the fact that her whole fucking design is so queer-coded that it’s like goddamn catnip!!!! Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: I AM SO DOWN FOR F!RYDER/SLOANE THAT THE ONLY REASON I HAVEN’T WRITTEN THIS IS BECAUSE IT TAKES ME A DISGUSTINGLY LONG TIME TO FEEL COMFORTABLE ENOUGH WITH A GAME TO WRITE FIC FOR IT!!!! My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Kaetus is the only on-screen friendship I can recall for her, but gosh dang it. My unpopular opinion about this character: I’m pretty sure this overlaps with the ‘how I feel about this character,’ but also: I can’t blame Sloane for joining the rebellion. The Nexus uprising was a mess, and from what I recall of the lore, people were hungry, panicking, and feeling betrayed by their leaders. Sloane was also explicitly against using the krogan to violently put down the rebels, and switched sides after the leadership went behind her back to make the deal with Clan Nakmor. (Also, after checking the wiki: I think Tann didn’t mind using the krogan as attack dogs, but the krogan ultimately left because Spender reneged on the deal that was that the krogan got to have a say in the leadership if they did their part in the rebellion? A lot of politics! Which aren’t really my thing! But again. Establishing herself as the de facto ruler of Kadara Port, even though it’s brutal, I don’t think is any worse than what Aria did in the original Trilogy but Aria gets portrayed in the games and fandom a heck of a lot more sympathetically!) ...and now that I’ve gotten this all off my chest, I also admit that I have no idea how unpopular this opinion actually is, just vague recollections of Bad Opinions that crossed my dash shortly after the game came out. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: Give Ryder more opportunities to flirt or interact with Sloane, just as we get with Reyes!!!! Favorite friendship for this character: Kaetus and Sloane! My crossover ship: I don’t usually think in terms of crossovers, but I think she’d adapt well to the Fallout universe, so… Cait/Sloane, why not.
I’m sorry the reply took so long! Work was wild the past few days, but I had a lot of fun answering this! :D
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2019-03-12 02:09 pm (UTC)Favorite character: Jack!!! I loved her as a ball of rage in ME2, learning that she can actually start trusting people (and I hc her as slowly, offscreen building up that trust and friendships with the rest of the crew, not just Shepard) and her touching vulnerability and just. God. Her loyalty mission guts me every time.
Least Favorite character: Ulp. There are so many characters I love, and others I love to hate, but in a fun way? And there are others who I like but think the writing team did them dirty. So uh. If I have to choose, I guess Ashley? I don't even dislike her, I just didn't emotionally latch on to her the way I did most of my other squadmates. Plus she had the disadvantage of being dead in my first ME2 playthrough, which is where I started playing.
5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): I have so many ships!!!! Jack/Miranda is one of my faves, but I’m also into Kasumi/Miranda and Drack/Lexi. With the right writer, I am also into Cora/Sarissa and Samara/Zaeed.
Character I find most attractive: Jack!!!
Character I would marry: Samantha Traynor!!!! I love her very much and adore her understanding of the important things in life. Like fancy toothbrushes! (I would also marry Kasumi, but I have other cherished ships for her and suspect I’m too much of a boring law-abiding homebody for the best thief in the galaxy.)
Character I would be best friends with: Oof, that’s a hard one. Samantha? If not, then maybe Tali or Kasumi.
a random thought: What does space food taste like??? Given time and all the other alien cultures mingling, what’s the new fast food??? What asari seasonings or snacks have become popular on Earth? What are the new trends and opinions on different racial/ethnic foods, and what about the eye-rolling that must inevitably occur when you get statements like “asari food is all X” and an asari rolls their eyes and goes “nah, that’s only true about this one region of Thessia, when you get more inland the flavor profiles all change”?
An unpopular opinion: I don’t know how unpopular this actually is, but: Andromeda’s a decent game. I fully admit that I was disappointed that it wasn’t like the trilogy, and there are many areas that I would have liked to have improved, but it was decent. I had fun running around shooting things, I loved my companions, and yes, I do criticize the general themes of space colonization, but it’s still a perfectly fun game to play.
My Canon OTP: Tali/Garrus is adorable.
My Non-canon OTP: Jack/Miranda!!!!
Most Badass Character: Oof. So many of them get such great moments throughout the game, but Samara? Ask me on a different day and I might pick someone else, but her utter commitment to the code and the way she completely changed the course of her life makes me ache. And then at the monastery in ME3, where she’s ready to kill herself to give Falere a chance to live free…? Oh god I cried so damn much.
Most Epic Villain: Honestly, the epic scope of the war against the Reapers meant that individual villains rarely felt ‘epic’ to me, just because the enemy itself was so often impersonal? ME1 was my least favorite of the games so I never replayed it, but I did find the fights against Saren and Benezia more touching specifically because they had those more personal connections to the characters.
Pairing I am not a fan of: There are enough interesting characters and interactions that as long as it’s not one of my hard no’s (incest or non-con) that I’m willing to give most of them a shot. So uh. I’m really having to think hard on this one. Maaaaaybe Wrex/Grunt? I think they could be fun to play off against one another, but I wouldn’t ship them.
Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Why the hell did they give Ashley the makeover in ME3!!! Her whole thing was that she’s a soldier and just!!! In making these design choices we are also making statements about the character and I don’t think they really thought this through!!!! (Similarly: as much as I love Jack, uh. Her heavy makeup is AMAZING but where the hell does this hard-ass convict have the time to do her eyeliner! Where does she get it! I could buy it as part of her development in ME3 in a way that I don’t buy it in Ashley! Also what is with Samara’s outfit!!! Gotta be a space wizard samurai of a quasi-religious order but oops gotta put on heels and bare your tiddies!)
Favourite Friendship: There are so many great character dynamics it’s hard to choose!!!! Uh. Tali and Garrus, maybe? They’re one of the few pairs where we get to see them throughout the entire trilogy, and it’s lovely.
Character I most identify with: Oof, this is a hard one. And honestly, it’s changed over the years and at different points in the trilogy (or Andromeda). So I’m gonna go with the absolutely tongue-in-cheek answer about the quarian lady who has a vibrator built into her suit and is completely oblivious to her turian friend trying to flirt with her. Horny and oblivious? Yep, that’s me.
Character I wish I could be: I’m perfectly happy where I am, honestly. And while there are some things I’d love to have (the tight-knit friendships, the sense of place and belonging, some of the eventual happy endings they get) most of the characters suffer through enough to get there that I don’t really want to switch lives.
003 | Sloane Kelly:
How I feel about this character: Underrated fave!!!! Especially because goddammit but the game itself feels so explicitly designed and written so that they WANT the player to view her as an antagonist, especially because they don’t give her the same level of sympathetic interaction or in-game backstory that they do with other characters like Reyes or Akksul! And it’s really fucking hard for me to disentangle that from general misogynoir and the fact that her whole fucking design is so queer-coded that it’s like goddamn catnip!!!!
Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: I AM SO DOWN FOR F!RYDER/SLOANE THAT THE ONLY REASON I HAVEN’T WRITTEN THIS IS BECAUSE IT TAKES ME A DISGUSTINGLY LONG TIME TO FEEL COMFORTABLE ENOUGH WITH A GAME TO WRITE FIC FOR IT!!!!
My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Kaetus is the only on-screen friendship I can recall for her, but gosh dang it.
My unpopular opinion about this character: I’m pretty sure this overlaps with the ‘how I feel about this character,’ but also: I can’t blame Sloane for joining the rebellion. The Nexus uprising was a mess, and from what I recall of the lore, people were hungry, panicking, and feeling betrayed by their leaders. Sloane was also explicitly against using the krogan to violently put down the rebels, and switched sides after the leadership went behind her back to make the deal with Clan Nakmor. (Also, after checking the wiki: I think Tann didn’t mind using the krogan as attack dogs, but the krogan ultimately left because Spender reneged on the deal that was that the krogan got to have a say in the leadership if they did their part in the rebellion? A lot of politics! Which aren’t really my thing! But again. Establishing herself as the de facto ruler of Kadara Port, even though it’s brutal, I don’t think is any worse than what Aria did in the original Trilogy but Aria gets portrayed in the games and fandom a heck of a lot more sympathetically!) ...and now that I’ve gotten this all off my chest, I also admit that I have no idea how unpopular this opinion actually is, just vague recollections of Bad Opinions that crossed my dash shortly after the game came out.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: Give Ryder more opportunities to flirt or interact with Sloane, just as we get with Reyes!!!!
Favorite friendship for this character: Kaetus and Sloane!
My crossover ship: I don’t usually think in terms of crossovers, but I think she’d adapt well to the Fallout universe, so… Cait/Sloane, why not.
I’m sorry the reply took so long! Work was wild the past few days, but I had a lot of fun answering this! :D